Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

The chortling Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor should never be allowed to give interviews about sex abuse

Just whose idea was it to allow Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor to appear on the Today programme this morning to defend the Church following the O'Brien revelations? In syntax worthy of John Prescott, the former Archbishop of Westminster basically argued that there have always been saints and sinners in the Catholic Church and, er, that's it. You can hear the whole embarrassing episode here, at 2 hours 10 mins in. Worse, he accompanied his comments with his trademark nervous chortle – as he has done before when discussing priestly crimes. Cardinal Cormac isn't up to this sort of grilling; he never was. Archbishop Vincent Nichols would have done a better job, as his policy of never saying anything memorable on any subject would at least have provided some sort of safeguard. But perhaps he's too cross at being excluded from the conclave to give interviews. I despair.